Pluralism with Syncretism: a Perspective from Latin American Religious Diversity

Open Theology 2018; 4: 236–245 Latin American Perspectives on Religion Marciano Adilio Spica* Pluralism with Syncretism: A Perspective from Latin American Religious Diversity https://doi.org/10.1515/opth-2018-0017 Received May 7, 2018; accepted June 5, 2018 Abstract: The aim of this paper is to defend a type of pluralistic philosophical theory that addresses the specific characteristics of Latin American religious diversity. In order to do this, I will first try to show how, from a Latin American perspective, the discussion of religious diversity necessarily imposes the concept of syncretism and how this concept can be understood within the debate about diversity. After that, I will defend an understanding of religiosity that takes syncretism as something natural, given the functioning of our systems of practices and beliefs in general. Finally I will defend the advantages of a pluralistic philosophical perspective of religion that considers the phenomenon of syncretism and how it is necessary for an understanding of Latin American religiosity. Keywords: religious syncretism; religious diversity; religion in Latin America 1 Diversity and syncretism Contemporary societies coexist with a wide variety of beliefs and practices, and Latin America is not excluded from this immensely diverse field. Here, as in many other places, it is possible to find Catholics, Evangelicals, Muslims, Buddhists, Atheists, Agnostics, Umbandistas, Candomblecistas and many others all sharing the same space. One of the hallmarks of Latin American popular religiosity, however, is its syncretic variety; that is, it is not closed in systems that do not communicate, but it deals with diversity often in an extremely routine way to the extent of not seeing any problem in double belongings. Even when we say that Latin America is mostly Christian or Catholic, the notions of this Christianity or Catholicity are very different from typical European Catholicity. Here, popular Catholicity assumes the diverse beliefs and practices of African and native peoples, modifying and adapting the original beliefs of European Catholicism to the ways of life, challenges and worldviews of the Latin American people. González, Iglesias and Aguirre claim that: Western Christianity, which has developed in European cultures and environments, finds new perspectives, new frame- works in which to understand each other, in dialogue with other religions that offer their own experience of God and their walk in faith. In such a meeting of revelations, both do not remain indifferent, underlining their differences, but bet on an enriching change.1 They emphasize in their work the experience of the Andean faith and how over a long period of time the Andean ways of life and Christian beliefs have come together to the point of creating a differentiated religiosity. This differentiated religiosity, though, still calls itself Catholic despite evidence of mergers with prehispanic religiosity. 1 González, Iglesias and Aguirre, “A conversão de Jesus à Fé originária Andina”, 76. *Corresponding author: Marciano Adilio Spica, State University of Midwest of Parana, Brazil; E-mail: [email protected] Open Access. © 2018 Marciano Adilio Spica, published by De Gruyter Open. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License. Pluralism with Syncretism: A Perspective from Latin American Religious Diversity 237 This way of seeing and understanding Latin American Catholicity in a different way from European is also emphasized by Afonso M. L. Soares. He claims the need for the Catholic Church to take into account popular religiosity in Brazil and the multiple influences that, for example, Afro culture plays in Brazilian Catholic religiosity. He argues that one should not deny in principle “the popular effort to join different and contradictory gods in the same religious experience, blind to the possible similarity between such an effort and the brilliant symbolic-theoretical formulation of the Trinitarian dogma”2. For him, the idea of a ready- made, definite and prefixed Christianity confronted with imperfect and unfinished belief systems must be left aside to show the importance and density of syncretism in the Latin American Catholic religion. In addition to Catholicity, we are now seeing many neo-Pentecostal religions emerging in Latin America. Although they often try to deny syncretism and defend a certain purity of faith, they are extremely syncretic, especially in ritual matters. This is clear, for example, in their use of popular music in worship, in their dances of praise and in their way of understanding Christian belief.3 Latin America still cultivates innumerable other religious groups which, if not in a majority, are undoubtedly important for the cultural constitution of these peoples. It is not possible, for example, to deny the importance in Brazil of the Afro-Brazilian religions4, especially Candomblé and Umbanda5, which have their roots in the African slaves of the colonial era and remained important movements for their still oppressed ancestors, and which today are religions followed by many people, playing a large role in the Brazilian popular imagination. If, for a long time, Candomblé and Umbanda were considered resistance religions and were persecuted by state power and by the Catholic Church6, today they are taken as cults worthy of study and a written theology has even been developed7. One perhaps fundamental characteristic of these religions is their immense syncretism with (especially Catholic) Christianity, spiritualism, the cults of indigenous peoples, and, of course, African religious traditions, constituting a multi-coloured panel of forms, rites and ways of life8. In addition to religions of Christian and African origin, there are also traditions that preserve the culture of the original peoples, such as the Andean peoples, especially in Peru and Bolivia, but also in other countries, and the Maya peoples in Mexico, as can be seen, for example, in the excellent study by Manuel Marzal9 which compares syncretisms present in Peru, Brazil and Mexico. More recently, we have the arrival of the Eastern religions, mainly branches of Buddhism, Yoga, and others that, though their followers are seeking to preserve them as traditional movements, are succumbing to the influence of the Latin way of life. In addition to all this religious variety, there is also the phenomenon of double belonging, where one believer actively participates in more than one religious cult. It is common in Brazil, for instance, for an individual to participate in the Afro religions and Catholicism, or quietly to assimilate Oriental principles while claiming to be Christian. But if syncretism is a fact in Latin American popular religiosity, it is not always viewed positively by academics, governments and traditional religions. It is often understood as a “wrong” way of practicing religiosity, and there are authors who defend the need for religious practices to reject it and to cherish a more 2 Soares, “Interfaces da Revelação”, 18. 3 For further study see, for example, Andrade, “A religiosidade brasileira”. 4 One could, in this same sense, speak of the Vodou religion in Haiti which also has an African root. 5 In addition to these two well-known Afro-Brazilian cults, there is a huge variety of other subclassifications of Afro-Brazilian religions, for example, Quimbanda, Xambá, Toré, Terecô, Babassuê, Iarê, Catimbó, Tambor de Mina, Pajelança, etc. For a more detailed explanation, see, for example, Carneiro, “Religiões Afro-brasileiras”. 6 Even today there are reports of persecution of Afro-Brazilian religions, motivated mainly by some neo-Pentecostal religions. See, for example, Silva, “Intolerância Religiosa”. 7 Afro-Brazilian religions are characteristically of oral tradition (See, Rivas Neto, “Teologia Ori-bará), but today a vast theological literature has been produced on the subject, especially since the creation of the Faculty of Umbandista Theology in São Paulo in 2003. 8 It is important to note that syncretism is often condemned even within the African matrix religions in Brazil. In Candomblé, for example, there has been an attempt to return to African roots and an attempt to discard the syncretism with Catholicism from the period of slavery. For some adherents of Candomblé, such syncretism caused the identity of the black people to be lost. See, Consorte, “Em torno de um Manifesto de Ialorixás Baianas contra o Sincretismo”. 9 Marzal, “El Sincretismo Iberoamericano”. 238 M. A. Spica purist expression of religiosity. In this sense, syncretism is taken as an evil in itself that leads religiosities to lose their identities and relativize their beliefs.10 I understand, however, that syncretism is a constituent part of Latin American popular religiosity and, more than that, it is not an evil, but a normal phenomenon, and is constitutive of all faith or religious experience so must be taken into account in the formulation of a pluralistic philosophical theory. But before I defend the necessity for and peculiarities of such a theory it is necessary to clarify better the various uses of the word syncretism. Leonardo Boff11 presents what, for him, are the various ways in which syncretism is understood. Among the modes listed by Boff are syncretism as addition, accommodation, mixing, agreement, translation, and recasting. The first understanding, addition, refers to cases when there is only one addition or alternation of beliefs, addition without interaction among

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